Start programming graphics and animation with Processing (http://www.processing.org), an easy-to-learn, free, open-source programming environment. Processing is great for beginners who are learning to program, and powerful enough for professionals to use as a design tool.

Creative people have made many interesting projects in Processing, some with just tiny amounts of code! Here are some examples.

Recently, the Tiny Sketch competition has Processing entries that are all under 200 characters; here's the winner:

Casey Reas, one of the founders of the Processing project, had several pieces in the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts inaugural exhibit , all made with Processing (scroll down to Main Gallery: C.E.B. Reas):

Processing is based on the Java programming language. One important advantage: it is trivial to export your Processing work into a Java applet or application. People can view your work easily through a web browser, on multiple platforms, without having the Processing environment.

This will be a 3-hour, hands-on beginners' session on programming with Processing. We'll go over the basics of programming and graphics, working with geometric shapes and images, and controlling animation and movement.
We'll play with a lot of examples and learn to customize and extend them, so bring a computer (Linux, Mac OSX and Windows are all supported), preferably with Java loaded. If you haven't done much programming before, and/or need help setting up the Processing environment, it might be a good idea to come on time.

Bio:

Bill Hsu builds and works with interactive audiovisual systems in performance. He is on sabbatical from the Department of Computer Science
at San Francisco State University, where he teaches computer music, computer architecture, and intro. to programming for CS and non-CS majors. Feel free to email me (whsu at sfsu.edu) for more information. Website: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~whsu

Please add your name below if you are interested in coming to the class (no committment implied):